Jesus Was a Carpenter

Jesus was a carpenter and He worked with a saw and a hammer

And His hands could join a table true enough to stand forever

And He might have spun His life out in the coolness of the morning

But He put aside His tools and He walked the burning highways

And He built His house from people just like these

And He found them as they wandered through the wild Judean mountains

And He found them as they pulled their nets upon the Sea of Galilee

And for a thousand evenings while the day behind Him emptied

He put aside His tools and stopped to touch the dying

And He built His house from people just like these

It was on a storming Sunday when He rode to old Jerusalem

And the palms they cast before Him

Were like the crimes they laid against Him

It was on a storming Friday when He climbed the streets to Calvary

And where He died today why they're selling beads and postcards

And they tell us too that that was long ago

But would He stand today upon the sands of California

And walk the sweating blacktop of New York and Mississippi?

Would He be a guest on Sunday, a vagrant on a Monday?

With the doors locked tight against His kind you know

Oh, come again now Jesus be a carpenter among us

There are chapels in our discontent, cathedrals to our sorrows

And we dwell in golden mansions with the sand for our foundations

And the raging water's rising and the thunder's all around us

Won't You come and build a house on rock again

Jesus was a carpenter and He worked with a saw and a hammer

And His hands could form a table true enough to stand forever